“I dunno they kinda freak me out, that’s all.” said Hogarth as he reflexively checked over his lasgun. “The bald one looks like he’s on something, and that lady hasn’t let go of that flag since we got here.” The guardsman stared at the four kasrkin troopers who were speaking with the company commander on the far side of the camp.

“You’d need to be on something to use those guns.” said Carter, her mouth half-full of ration-bar. “I’ve seen them in action, I’m not sure which side they killed more of.”

“Adelade and Pike don’t seem to mind them too much.” said Bailey, her voice echoing from the far side of the barricade.

“Yeah well Pike is crazy, and I’m pretty sure Adelade isn’t capable of feeling fear after…” Carter trailed off as their commander, Major Weaver, approached. The assembled guardsmen came to attention, a couple still chewing down the last of their meal.

“I see you’re all settled in. Good. This beautiful little rock is going to be our home for the next little while, until the colonists arrive. Until then we’re going to occupy ourselves with cleaning out all of the vermin who have snuck in while the imperium has been away.”

“This planet is a shit-hole.” Private Gorman kicked at a dirt clod as he scanned the line of collapsed buildings and rubble piles surrounding the square where they had set up camp, then quickly added “Sir.” when he noticed the Major looking at him with eyes that promised a month of latrine duty.

“This planet is not a shit-hole, Private” corrected the officer, “It is your shit-hole. And your break is over. We’ve had reports of xenos in the area. I want those barricades functional by nightfall.” Major Weaver didn’t yell the order. He never did. Yelling was the Sergeant’s job, and the moment the Major had turned to walk to his command tent the Sarge set about her job with gusto.

“Alright Guardsmen you heard the man, assholes and elbows! Dale and Bailey on sentry, Zed on tech, the rest of you lift with your legs! And Gorman! Come here…”

— — —

It had been less than 24 hours since the “Lucky 17” platoon of the 131st Infantry had made landfall on Hubris. The handpicked group of Cadian guards and elite kasrkin troops had orders to scout areas that had resisted orbital scans, and to remove and resistance they might find along the way. It would not take them long to encounter some.

— — —

“Shit!” Eckhardt ducked below the barrier just as a barrage of gunfire skittered across the top. “Adelade and Pavlichenko are down and one of those fucking guns blew up in Pike’s face. I told you we shouldn’t be screwing around with this ‘advanced weapon’ bullshit”

“They have some sort of stealth tech. We can’t hit what we can’t see, fall back!” Sergeant Victory hated losing. It felt like a betrayal of her name. They had surprised a patrol of Tau while following the apparitions that were haunting the ruined city, but as soon as they had started firing the odd xeno’s suits had faded into a near-perfect camouflage. They had managed to take out one of the suits and a number of the accompanying drones, but it had taken too long - the risk of the xenos reinforcing rose every minute they were here. “Samuels, grab Pavlichenko! Guardsmen! We. Are. Leaving!” Victory promised herself that the next xeno they encountered would not be so lucky…

Last edited by Ynysley on Thu May 30, 2019 10:08 am, edited 9 times in total.

Adelade dove for cover behind the barricade as bolter fire exploded across the pavement behind her, sending rockcrete shrapnel in all directions. In one fluid movement she rolled and turned, throwing herself against the protective steel of the bulwark and snapping her plasma rifle up to fire two shots at the figures ducking behind the ruined building across the street.

“Why are they shooting at us?!” Bailey was frantic, her eyes wide with fear as she scanned the bit of street she could see from cover with her lasgun.

“Because they’re shooting at us.” Adelade grinned and flipped off the regulator on the plasma gun, causing the bulky weapon to hum dangerously as the accelerator coils glowed with barely contained energy. She turned and aimed at the second floor of the ruin and the weapon flashed, the blaze of light followed a moment later by an agonized scream from the building. Adelade ducked back behind the barricade, a satisfied smile on her face.

“But… but… they’re Astartes” Bailey fired down the street at a barricade similar to the one they were huddled behind as an armored body lept behind it.

“Space Wolves.” Adelade agreed, glancing over to where their Sergeant was knelt, communicating furiously with someone on her comm-bead. “I’m not sure why they’re here, but until we get the order to stand down we defend ourselves, I don’t care if chaos itself comes down that street, is that clear Private?”

“Yes Corporal.” Bailey leaned out again, but quickly pulled back as a bolter round zipped past her, taking a chunk out of a building a dozen meters away. “Damnit, that sniper is deadly!” she said, her eyes drifting to the body propped up against a nearby bit of rubble, the half of its face that was left slumped onto its chest.

Adelade was quiet for a moment as she listened in on the squad’s tactical frequency. “He’s out of range. Samuels is trying to flank them but there’s another one with a heavy bolter on the- nevermind, he’s down. Now if we can get…” She trailed off as the bolter fire suddenly stopped and the voice of Sergeant Victory crackled into their comm-beads.

They had landed on the outskirts of the ancient industrial facility nearly an hour ago, and Victory still couldn’t tell what the arcane tangle of corroded pipes and dormant gears was supposed to produce. Not that it would take much to flummox her technically, she mused. Though she had memorized the technical specs for every piece of weaponry and tactical gear available to her, and she could disassemble, clean and reassemble a standard lasgun, blindfolded, in under three minutes, her knowledge of engineering and machine work stopped at the end of the barrel. Anything beyond that was the purview of officers and tech priests.

Her reverie was interrupted abruptly by a hiss of static in her comm-bead followed by the curt voice of the platoon marksman, Pavlichenko.

“Contact front. 50 meters.”

To Victory’s immense pride the reaction from the rest of the platoon was nearly instantaneous. Each guardsman dropped silently into cover, taking up firing positions to cover possible approach vectors. A half-dozen took up positions around Major Weaver, shielding him with their bodies as he dropped to one knee and began relaying orders.

“Identity?”

“They’re keeping to the shadows. Looks like… eldar?”

Adelade’s voice cut into the feed. “Dark eldar! They’re closing!”

“Fire!”

The bark of lasguns broke over the hum of plasma coils as the guardsmen engaged at the Major’s order. Victory could see them too now, shadows flitting here and there through openings in the ruined walls, never staying in sight for more than a moment.

“Can’t find a target! They’re moving too fast!” Bailey swung her lasgun around and fired, the shot burning a hole in a pipe where a Drukhari helmet had been just a moment before.

“The enemy is swift, but ammo is cheap.” Major Weaver’s voice was steady and sure. “Fill the air with fire!”

The plasma hum became a sharp whine as safety mechanisms were disabled, and in moments the air began to sizzle with the heat of lasfire and plasma impacts. Victory was gratified to hear a number of screams from the approaching xenos as the blanket of fire began to find targets. She pulled her own plasma pistol from its place at her hip, smiling at its glow as she leveled it at an approaching shadow.

Private Rena Bailey ducked low as she ran, pulse rounds snapping as they passed over her head. Cover was twenty feet away, the ruined lower level of a once-towering building now reduced to a two-floored skeleton of barely coherent rubble. The distance seemed like miles to her. As she dove behind a chipped rockcrete wall the voice of Corporal Adelade keyed over her vox-link.

They had caught the Tau encampment relatively unprepared, although positioned snipers and a small missile pod near the center of the Tau force made for a dangerous assault prospect. Their sergeant had reacted exactly as Bailey has predicted - exactly as Victory Jones always did - in the face of overwhelming odds, respond with equally overwhelming firepower. Bailey was the only one in the squad not currently holding one of the bulky experimental plasma weapons that Victory had talked their CO, Major Weaver, into requisitioning for the platoon. After all, what were a couple of self-inflicted casualties by way of plasma malfunction if it bought a victory for the Guard? Amazingly most of the platoon agreed, at least after they had seen Pavlichenko atomize a group of heavily armored xenos combatants at long range.

Bailey thought they were all insane. Her lasgun might not be much better than a flashlight against most terrors, but at least it wouldn’t vaporize her at an inopportune moment.

Her thoughts turned back to the battle as an explosion tore through the Tau compound. Apparently Pavlichenko had found the missile pod. On cue Victory’s voice cut into the vox feed.

“Advance all! Eliminate and secure! For the Imperium!”

She might not be brave or stupid enough to carry a plasma rifle, but she was no coward. Bailey brought her lasgun up to firing position as she twisted around out of cover and darted forward, varying her steps along the broken street to make for a harder target. In the distance she spotted a smoothly reflective helmet emerge from behind some ancient, ruined vehicle, a long, silver rifle raised at some distant target. A fire warrior. Bailey sighted, and fired, raising her voice with her commerades as the foe fell.

Adelade risked a glance into the night fog, her optics barely able to clear more than fifty feet before the haze crept in. “Ident?”

Pavlichenko tapped on her wrist for a moment before responding. “Unknown. They’re not running any Imperial code. If we scan them we’ll give away our position.”

“No. Surprise might be all we have. The Major’s orders were clear. Nothing gets past us.” Adelade keyed her comm-bead, alerting the firing line of guardsmen she had positioned within the nearby ruins. “This is Jackdaw to all units. Overwatch one-two-five on my mark.” A barely audible whine could be heard around them as distant plasma coils sang to life. “Fire!”

Suddenly the night air was alive with blue fire as plasma charges flew into the mist, boiling it away to illuminate a handful of black-clad figures. With their targets clear it was only a moment before Pavlichenko and the other squad sharpshooters found their marks with overcharged shots, and a series of firelight bursts preceded the heavy sound of armored bodies hitting the ground.

“Cease fire!”

Immediately the world was thrown back into darkness. Adelade blinked, the afterimage of the barrage dancing on her eyes as they readjusted to the dark. “Contact?”

Pavlichenko’s blue-lit face appeared again as the sniper scanned. “None. Clear.”

“Did you get a good look at them? Big bastards.”

“Astartes. Not sure which. Might be theirs, might be ours.”

Adelade made the sign of the Aquila. “I’ll call it in, we’ll wait for first light to recon. I’m not running around in the dark with Traitor Marines.”

Pavlichenko nodded. Her stoic expression has never changed, but she was breathing heavily as the adrenaline from the encounter worked through her system. “Orders?”

“Keep scanning, might have been a scout squad. If there are more we’ll be ready.”

Pavlichenko returned to her screen as Adelade keyed the command frequency. Slowly the mist began to retake the silent city ruins.

Lance Corporal Svetlana Pavlichenko is the daughter of a Cadian and Vostroyan enlisted couple, and was raised with the proud military traditions of both parents. Extensive training with a variety of firearms from a young age has honed Pavlichenko's innate talents as a sniper, turning the stoic young woman into a lethal terror for any she turns her eyes upon.

“Did you see Nevin? No warning! His head just… /popped!/ One of them is a psyker!”

“Plasmas! Limiters off! Don’t let them get close!”

…

Private First Class Miles Spunkmeier was not the most articulate man in the Imperium. Most of his youth had been spent training at shooting at others while getting shot at himself, and that had prepared him for a career of the same. His personal lexicon was limited to a basic grasp of low gothic, a variety of Militarum jargon, and a thesaurus-worth of curse words derived from a half-dozen provincial languages. None of which accurately described the current insanity he found himself in the middle of.

Spunkmeier had seen many bad things during his career. Horrific xenos spawn. Blooded, raving, heretical cultists. Monsters out of the darkness of nightmare. Things that lept out of the shadows to drag his squad-mates, screaming, into the night. Things that haunted him, left him in a cold sweat, wakened him with his own screaming. This was different. These Astartes, their armor a bare, shimmering grey, weapons blazing with an unearthly light as they stalked forward implacably in the face of charged plasma fire.

He had been standing next to Nevin when the man had cried out suddenly, dropping his rifle and grasping at his head, clawing as his own eyes until they bled and then… his head had burst like a ripe fruit. Spunkmeier had seen bolter headshots before, but there had been no fire coming in their direction. One of the silver warriors had looked in their direction and… Nevin had just died. “Psyker” was a word Spunkmeier had heard before, and of course he was passingly familiar with the astropaths employed by the Imperium, but he had never thought he’d see that power used in combat.

He turned and leveled his plasma rifle at the grey warrior. The coils of the weapon buzzed angrily within their casing, making the weapon judder as the shot overcharged. There was a whump of displaced air as the incandescent blue bolt arced through the air to hit the target just left of center mass. Spunkmeier felt a momentary jolt of elation before the haze of heat and vaporized matter cleared. It was still standing. Still advancing as rivulets of molten silver slag dripped down from ruined armor plating.

“All units fall back to point theta! Defensive positions!” The Sarge’s voice erupted from his vox link. “Break off engagement!”

Spunkmeier didn’t need convincing, he was moving before Victory had finished her order. He wasn’t sure what the package they had been after was supposed to be, but whatever it was those silver horrors could keep it.

Company Medic Mercy Keynes might lack the bloodthirsty nature of her kasrkin squad-mates, but her skills are no less honed, and her skill at battlefield triage has saved more than one of her companions from a painful death (or worse).